Eating Jiaozi at BL's

Chinese Dumplings with Garlic-Chilli-Vinegar Sauce

Despite having chewed two jasmine tea-scented chewing gums for dear life, I still smelt of garlic. Luckily I sat between LS and JoW during this afternoon's PTA meeting and those girls are used to me turning up in some form of disarray if not trouble, hence they were mentally prepared for me, if you wish.

I haven't visited BL in a looong time. Not that I hadn't wanted to, but I was in a period in my life when I hated driving into Modena and spent most of my time growing fat at home instead. I finally moved my arse this morning and went to see her as promised and was greeted with a packet of flour, a huge dough and a big bowl of meat filling : it's jiaozi-making time, folks! Very lucky me.

Rolling out the dough to make the wrappers

I'm too lazy to make Chinese dumplings. I've done that occasionally and usually got bored by the time I had to wrap up the filling. You take quite a while to make it, and you just pop them into the mouth so quickly. I ate at least 2 dozens of those yummy dumplings by the way. Dipping them into a home-made garlic, chilli, oil and vinegar dip. You understand why I had garlic in my breath.

She made everything look so easy, but of course you need some practice to reach that stage. Very lucky kid and Hub in that family.

We had a good chat, I haven't spoken Mandarin in a while and am never particularly fluent nor at ease in the language. But I'd better get used to it since it may just be the language of the future. Though BL had been very kind insisting that I spoke good Mandarin for a Singaporean. I guess hanging out with a guy from Beijing when I was a student in Paris helped alot.

Chef at work

Voilà, I'm stuffed. But it was so good. Thank you, BL, for the special treat!